[Bartek Skorupa]

Hit ENTER on Num Pad. This closes editing of the text. Then hit V.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

I think that it has more to do with the system settings, than with AE. Check the shortcuts in your system preferences.
I’m not sure about it, because I haven’t still upgraded to Snow.
Another thing is, that I never use Cmd-M. I’ve been always using Cmd-Shift-/
Just a habit.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

I don’t know if it helps, but you can simply select the position of the null, copy it (Ctl-C), open any text editor and paste it.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

This is simply not true. Everything will be rendered.
You may have made one mistake, that many people do:
Did you add the same comp to render queue 4 times?
This is wrong.
Make 4 duplicates of your comp, make changes, and add 4 different comps to render queue.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

The only way I can think of is to move the mask to some solid, place this solid above the layer you want to mask, and Track Matte the layer to the solid’s alpha. Then you can simply move your solid.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

I don’t know exactly which effects you are using, but I can assume, that one of them can be “magnify”
Note that it has the property called “Center”. This is something that uses absolute coordinates, so the position of the Adjustment Layer you applied the effect to is irrelevant.
You have to link this property to the track.
If you have the null that follows the track, just alt-click the “Center” and pick whip this to the position of the null.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

First check out if you have set the output of the proxy so that it renders with alpha.
If so, everything is fine.
Check out the image below. Is this your situation?

If so – you have the background of you comp set to be red. You can change it back to it’s default black by Cmd-Shift-B, and change the color to what you want. If you want to see the alpha grid – click this guy:

Is this the issue?

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

First issue:
You scaled down the layer that you used as a tracking data source. Tracking is done using the layer itself and doesn’t respect it’s scale.
Solution:
precompose the source layer, and track this composition

Second issue:
Applying the tracking data to the destination layer moves it to the position of the track. That’s how it works.
Solution:
Add the null layer. Apply the tracking data to this null. Parent your destination layer to this null.

voila

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

In most cases time remap or timewarp set up properly should do the job just fine. I base on my own experience. Sometimes it requires some tweaking, but I’m sure we can do it in AE as good as others who use gazillion Dollars equipment.
I was once co-operating with a studio using Smokes, Infernos and other such systems. I asked to do a simple time remapping to slow one shot down. We were sitting at Inferno.
It simply failed. I had my laptop with me, so I asked the guys to give the sequence. I slowed it down on my AE on laptop and gave them the result. It was 10 times better than the stuff achieved on Inferno.
The most difficult thing will be not getting the result, but convincing the client that it’s possible.
The client feels “safe” when something is done on equipment costing fortune. It’s just the way it is. Even if you get better results using cheap AE or some open-source software – they won’ believe. They will always say – “It’s not professional”.
Do you have access to original, not expanded footage? If so, maybe you should just try to do it and show the result to the client.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland

[Bartek Skorupa]

I’ve just found something like this:

https://aescripts.com/pt_multiplane/

I think you were looking exactly for such solution.

Bartek Skorupa
Warszawa, Poland